Nobody does tributes as well as politicians, particularly when the tributes not only allow them to be gracious but come with the added bonus of patting themselves on the back.
Such was the case at the end of Monday's Prince George city council meeting, when all eight councillors took turns praising the tenure of Mayor Shari Green.
To a man, they praised her and her leadership. They also threw bouquets to staff and to each other. The outpouring of appreciation from the councillors was as heartfelt and genuine as the tears Green shed at the end of her closing remarks.
It was a gracious exit for Green and a city council that was rife with division from their very first meeting three years ago.
Coun. Cameron Stolz downplayed the dysfunctional perception of this council, saying that the media reporting of conflict in the ranks didn't match the reality, where, by his count, 97 per cent of council votes were unanimous or near unanimous.
"We disagreed a lot but we made good decisions," was Stolz's final analysis of the last three years.
That comment is to be expected because Stolz is running for a third consecutive term on council. Of course those were good decisions because he and the other eight men at the table all had a hand in making them and all eight are running to win their seat back on council or, in the case of Lyn Hall, to succeed Green in the mayor's chair.
Stolz's analysis may be numerically correct but it's padded by a lot of routine votes for minor bylaw and zoning amendments, accepting reports from consultants and ordering staff to study issues brought up by delegations.
Virtually all of the city council votes that mattered in the past three years fell into that three per cent Stolz ignored. The multiple votes on the women's recovery centre at Haldi Road, the in-camera vote on Pine Valley, the reversals on downtown parking, the core review process and recommendations and the 5-4 vote to approve the 2012 property tax hike all come to mind.
A vote that wouldn't be included in Stolz's analysis was at the 2012 Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting, when he voted for a candidate from the Lower Mainland, instead of fellow Prince George city councillor Garth Frizell, to be third vice-president of the organization and its president in 2015.
Stolz wasn't the only one at the table Monday, looking back in the rearview mirror while wearing rose-colored glasses. Coun. Brian Skakun kicked off the love-in, saying how proud he was of this city council for the record amount of money it devoted to roads.
"It's been an interesting three years with ups and downs," he said, summarizing a three years that included him appealing his conviction for violating the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act for leaking a personnel report to the local media, demanding council follow him on his wild goose chase through the city's expense accounts and the uproar over snow removal and Haldi Road.
If that was just "interesting" for Skakun, then perhaps he prefers tuning in Thursday nights for the more sensational double-crossing and back-stabbing of the hit political drama Scandal.
Coun. Murry Krause cheered about "how civil and respectful this council has been with each other," which was mostly true in public but far removed from reality behind the scenes. The reason all of the local media outlets spoke of the divisiveness of this council was because most of the members of the council were quick to share their bitter complaints about the conduct of their fellow councillors behind each other's backs.
Yes, this council worked hard and did its best but that's what they were elected to do. Results, not effort, is what gets the marks in the final analysis. This council could have done much more if it hadn't wasted a lot of money and so much more time (theirs and senior staff's) on the futile exercise that was the core services review.
The kind words Monday night to one another and to Green in particular shouldn't be judged at face value. Instead, they should be seen as the grudging respect political adversaries show one another after spending years in the trenches together, where they devoted as much or more time taking shots at one another as they did in pursuit of common goals.
